Almatymixt
2024

On March 9 and 10, the Butakovskiy Waterfall hosted the "AlmatyMixt" ice climbing and drytooling festival on natural terrain. This was the first time such a festival had been held in Kazakhstan. About 25 climbers and an additional 150 people, including volunteers and spectators, participated in the festival. Here are the winners!

Women:
1 place - Polina Aubakirova
2 place - Gulnaz Januzakova
3 place - Ksenia Leontieva

Men:
1 place - Pavel Firsov
2 place - Ivan Nikolaev
3 place - Alisher Ahat

Follow the link for detailed results >

The main challenge was to create routes for the festival, as there were no pre-existing routes for mixed climbing and drytooling on the rocks in Kazakhstan. To be more specific, at first, we had the idea of creating routes for training purposes, and then, as an additional feature, we decided to hold a festival. In late January, we started working on the site, and in a month and a half of cleaning the rocks, we threw down tons of stones, soil, and vegetation. By the beginning of the festival, the first 8 routes were ready.

Take a look at the saved highlights on Instagram about how it was and have a fun)
Part 1 >
Part 2 >

The program was designed for participants with different climbing experience, there were both simple routes and quite challenging ones.

On the first day, there was a qualifying round. Each participant had to complete five routes and an additional warm-up route. Each participant started at a time selected during registration and completed all the routes in a specific order. The time limit for completing each route was 9 minutes, and there were three attempts allowed on each route. The final score for the qualification was determined by the total number of "zones" completed on all five routes. Everyone climbed with a top rope that day.

The next day was the final round of the competition. Six men and six women who had shown the best results in the qualifying rounds were selected to compete. And everyone else could climb the qualifying routes for training and fun. The time limit for completing the final route was 15 minutes, with three attempts allowed. The route itself was quite challenging, with a roof at the start, a slab in the middle, and hanging wooden elements on top.

Only Pavel Firsov almost completed the full route and won the festival.